Comment

In recent years the national debate over the war and over foreign policy in general has been framed frequently as a clash between idealism & realism. Political commentators are already framing the coming election in these terms with Pres. Nixon being seen as the realist & Sen. McGovern as the idealist. The opposition between these two viewpoints was most clearly drawn by Machiavelli--himself a realist if there ever was one. Long quote from M.'s "the Prince." Many of the "harsh realities" we have been facing up to over the last decade, although they seemed harsh enough, were not real; the world Communist conspiracy we are supposed to be fighting in Vietnam is an example. One would be hard put to decide whether we got into the war out of an excess of idealism or of realism. On one hand we have the managerial & academic people behind the gov't who take a professional pride in their suppression of natural feelings, or what they consider their "toughness"--the Pentagon Papers are an example of their work--&, on the other hand, we have the political men out in the open who build their careers on high-sounding phrases & grandiose promises. But the elements of Machiavelli's machinery of coercion & deception were coordinated and controlled to achieve some large end. In contrast, the elements of the machine we have assembled seem to be perpetually malfunctioning in such a way as to accomplish some unexpected end. The word "idealism" has come to suggest a straining after the impossible. In a time when our foresters are setting forest fires in Vietnam & our meteorologists are busy amking storms, & our bombs are equipped with television cameras, what we need to strain to do is to keep the impossible from occuring.